Digital lighting technologies, i.e. illumination based on semiconductor light sources, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), offer a viable alternative to traditional fluorescent, HID, and incandescent lamps. Functional advantages and benefits of LEDs include high energy conversion and optical efficiency, durability, lower operating costs, and many others. Recent advances in LED technology have provided efficient and robust full-spectrum lighting sources that enable a variety of lighting effects in many applications. Some of the fixtures embodying these sources feature a lighting module, including one or more LEDs capable of producing different colors, e.g. red, green, and blue, as well as a processor for independently controlling the output of the LEDs in order to generate a variety of colors and color-changing lighting effects.
User-responsive lighting systems have been implemented where users carry a personal device that communicates their lighting needs to the lighting system. The light output of one or more lighting fixtures in the lighting environment may be adjusted in response to a users' lighting preferences based on their lighting needs. Although such systems enable adjustment of a lighting fixture based on the individual settings of a user, they have a number of drawbacks. For example, in some environments (e.g., social settings, discussion groups, and/or meeting rooms), a user may want to move as desired throughout the environment while still maintaining his or her lighting preferences. Some user-responsive lighting systems may not enable such freedom of movement while maintaining lighting preferences. Also, for example, in some environments where multiple users interact, users with differing lighting needs may not be supplied with individualized lighting zones that lessen contrast between the individualized lighting zones.
Various therapeutic lighting systems have also been implemented. Such therapeutic lighting systems often include a lighting fixture that a user must sit or stand in front of for a period of time for therapy purposes. Such therapeutic lighting systems may have one or more drawbacks such as, for example, the requirement of dedicated spaces or locations for use and/or the bright therapeutic light being bothersome to other individuals present nearby that have other lighting needs.
Thus, there is a need in the art to provide lighting methods and apparatus for providing personalized lighting to users positioned proximal to one another that optionally overcomes one or more drawbacks of other lighting applications and/or methods.